Fail Better

“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett

So many things in life focus on success, but that’s not even half of the story. Every success comes after a series of failures. For this reason your focus most of the time needs to be on properly responding to failure. At work, school, even concerned family and friends will, with no unworthy aim, try to protect you from the pain and uncomfortable feelings of failure. But this is generally an illusion. Almost always real learning and growth comes with pain and certainly with the uncomfortable feelings that you aren’t there yet. And that’s true, you’re not there yet. But if you keep trying, and failing and learning from those failures, you’ll be able to fail better next time and that means you’ll be growing, which is the whole point anyway.

Sure, success in the long run is the goal, but positively responding to failure, especially deep failure, is a necessary part of the journey.